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Of Pikers And Pimps

St. Paul and Minneapolis are considering raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. There are no studies on the effect of a $15 per hour minimum wage because it’s never been that high. The studies of effects of prior minimum wage increases go both ways, depending on who you believe. What to do?

This is where it helps to be conservative, because we have principles to guide our actions, not just feelings. One principle is: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Another is: “Don’t tear down a fence until you know why it was built.” The core thought underlying these principles is to make changes cautiously, only when you’re certain they won’t cause more harm than good. Since the evidence is equivocal, adherence to conservative principles would dictate that we not raise the minimum wage to $15.

But Democrats are not conservatives so they have no such principles to restrain them. They’re going to raise it because it will please the mob and that’s the most important thing to them. So if you’re going to raise it despite the evidence, why stop at $15? Why not raise it to $100 per hour and we’ll all be rich? Pikers.

5 thoughts on “Of Pikers And Pimps”

The obvious retort of “why not $100” needs to be followed up, because the response will always be “that’s ridiculous.” You then need to ask them WHY it’s ridiculous, or what number between 15 and 100 would NOT be ridiculous? They can’t answer that with a rational thought because they never had one in the first place.

Why are we talking about this as though we don’t know the outcome? The effect will be to reduce the number of minimum wage jobs as their costs increase. The harder to find minimum wage jobs will be given to the best applicants. These will be older, better educated, and have a proven work record.
You want a higher minimum wage, fine, but don’t pretend that you are going to help the low-skilled, marginalized worker by doing so.